


All's fair in love and war

by numinousnumbat



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Crack, F/F, M/M, Meet-Cute, Multi, Sex Pollen, Swearing, Welters Challenge 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 01:04:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15498852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/numinousnumbat/pseuds/numinousnumbat
Summary: I put canon in a blender and hit the button. A quest for the seven keys if the questers hadn't met at Brakebills, and used fighting as foreplay. For the 2018 Welters Challenge, Week 8 Procrastination; submitting for Theme 1: “Build Your Own Quest.”





	All's fair in love and war

**Author's Note:**

> Dubcon note: There's a sex pollen scene that everyone is happily involved in, but if that's a squick for you, might want to give this fic a pass.

The key was on this island, somewhere. Quentin had been searching the entirety of two worlds, so narrowing it down to a tiny island was impressive, if he did say so himself. But now that they were here, he realized a few square miles of deserted sandy beach was a lot of space in which to hide a key. He flipped over a shell. Nope, not there.

“Locator spell,” Alice said, fingers flying.

“I’ll scan towards the water if you scan towards the hill,” Julia agreed.

“I can help,” Quentin said, hoping they didn’t take him up on his offer because he kind of had forgotten the spell and googling didn’t work in Fillory and he hated asking the two smartest magicians he knew about basic spells.

“You’re on lookout,” Alice said. Which was only slightly better than having to admit he didn’t remember the locator spell, but still sucked balls.

Julia and Alice were moving up the beach towards the sun at a slow and steady pace.

He tried to be the lookout for a few minutes, but they were on a deserted island in Fillory. No one had probably come to this island in decades. Maybe pirates had. He tried do the locator spell for rum, but it kept dinging on coconuts which kept exploding, so, yeah, he needed to relearn the locator spell once he was home.

He was lost in thought planning a responsible future where he didn’t get stuck as lookout and sorta totally missed a portal opening and three people jumping out onto his beach. Two women and a tall man, striding like they were walking into a club and knew they didn't have to wait in line.

“The key is ours,” cried one of the women as blue pulses of magic emitted from her hand. Was that battle magic? Woah, awesome!

“Over my dead body,” said Julia, easily sending back a few spells of her own.

“You’ll make a very attractive corpse then,” yelled the same feisty woman.

The tall man was headed Quentin’s way and Quentin was so lost in a little fantasy where this guy started taking off his clothes that he forgot to do any sort of defensive or protection spell.

“Hi, I’m Eliot,” the man said standing in front of Quentin. He was wearing a suit with a flowered vest. It wasn’t what Quentin thought an epic quest outfit would look like exactly, but it was closer than his own getup. If only he owned more than black pants and t-shirts.

“Hi,” Quentin said, looking up at Eliot. He glanced to his right where the two new women were doing the magical equivalent of pulling pigtails against Julia and Alice.

“I did not flirt with a librarian to let you have our key,” Alice yelled.

“I’d flirt with you so hard that you'd forget what you were looking for,” said the other woman, who was somehow walking on sand in heels.

Quentin turned back to Eliot. “We should probably just let them figure it out amongst themselves, right?”

“Yeah, I’m wearing vintage cufflinks, so I’m avoiding magical battles today,” Eliot said. He reached out and brushed some coconut off Quentin’s shoulder. Stupid exploding locator spell.

“So come here often?” Quentin said in a rush so Eliot wouldn't ask why Quentin was covered in coconut.

“First time,” Eliot said. “It’s been a month of firsts for me. If this keeps up, I’m going to end up at, like, Red Lobster.”

“Oh, get the cheddar biscuits!” Quentin said. God, he could go for a cheddar biscuit right now.

“Well, when in Rome,” Eliot said nodding.

The women were still yelling at each other while sending increasingly ridiculous spells at each other. Alice called in a swarm of bees that formed a hand giving a middle finger. Feisty made it smell like they were in the middle of a sulfur spring. Julia turned the sea pink. Fashionable made a sandcastle in the shape of a dick. 

“Do you see something shiny?” Eliot said. He started walking down the beach and Quentin had to half-jog to keep up with Eliot’s long legs. Eliot bent over and pulled up a key.

"We found it!" Quentin said and they shared a hug before remembering they were on different sides.

“Maybe we can play a game of Push for the key?” Quentin mused.

“Oh, I’m actually going to put it in my pocket and then Margo, Kady, and I are going to portal out of here,” Eliot said with an apologetic shrug. “But I’m sure you guys will get the next one.”

“Thanks, Eliot,” Quentin said. He wondered what sort of a lie he could come up with to keep Julia and Alice from learning that he just let Eliot walk away with the key. He should probably warn them before they portaled out. Did he remember any anti-portal spells? Quentin and Eliot walked back to where the women were still fighting. Kind of.

“That dress would look terrible on someone that didn’t have legs like yours,” Fashionable hissed at Alice.

"I like your pedicure!" Alice said. "I wish it was on someone that wasn't trying to steal from us!"

“So I have the key,” Eliot said. “We should probably head out.”

Julia turned to fume at Quentin. “You let this guy have the key?” 

“I, um, bested him in combat?” Eliot said, lying slightly better than Quentin could.

“Was your _dick_ involved in this combat?” Fashionable asked, eyes shooting daggers at Eliot.

“Margo, please, you wound me,” Eliot said pressing a hand to his heart. “I would at least buy a man this cute a drink before our dicks were acquainted."

“You think I’m cute?” Quentin squeaked out, flushing a deep shade of red.

“Not the point!” Alice said. She turned to the rest of the group. “It’s our quest and our key!”

There was a strange shimmer in the air and then a tall, dark man strode forward, shooting a paralysis spell on the group. Quentin couldn't move his arms or his legs or his mouth. 

“Don’t mind me,” the man said striding through. “I’m just here to pick up the key.” He walked to Eliot, unbuttoned his jacket and slid his hand into the interior pocket.

“Mmmmmmmmmrrrrrrrggggggh,” Quentin managed, his tongue and lips frozen in place.

“I’m Penny and, yes, I’m both psychic and a traveler,” he said. “You guys are screwed. See you next time.” He laughed to himself and then the air shimmered and he was gone. It took a few more seconds for the effects of the paralysis spell to wear off.

“Fucking fuck fuck fuck!” Margo stomped her foot. She opened a portal and the three of them disappeared into it. Quentin took a step forward to follow Eliot, but Julia threw her arm out to keep him from following. 

"First we're going to drink and then we're going to research the _fuck_ out of those thieving bastards," Julia said. Great plans like this were exactly why Julia was in charge.

 

***

 

“So Margo was hot, right?” Alice said. They were sitting around their small kitchen table in their shared apartment. Quentin was taking a Buzzfeed quiz to find out which Powerpuff Girl he was. He kept getting Bubbles, but he felt like he was more of a Blossom. 

Julia looked up from where she had been deep in dark web research mode for hours. She had found names for the three of their new arch nemeses: Eliot, Margo and Kady. “Yeah, if you’re into really hot brunettes that could beat the shit out of you.”

“Pot, kettle,” Alice said.

Holy shit. “So you’re into women?” Quentin asked Alice. “Is that why we didn’t work out?”

“Do you think you get to be the only bisexual disaster on this team, Quentin?” Alice spat. “Because I’m bisexual and I’m a disaster, same as you, Quentin Coldwater.” Alice dramatically grabbed her books and accidentally half of Julia's books and flounced out of the room.

“Am I a disaster?” Quentin asked Julia. 

Julia patted Quentin’s hand. “You do remember that Alice dumped you when she caught you with your dick down some random dude's throat?”

“First, we were on a break - “

“She was in Chicago for the weekend visiting her grandmother,” Julia interrupted.

“- and B, she didn’t catch me with some dude’s dick, she caught me when I was tagged on facebook in an off-color lightsaber joke.”

Ok, so Quentin had hooked up with this cute guy who was wearing a really good Luke Skywalker costume. Luke - probably not his real name? - had tagged Quentin the next morning as “8-inch lightsaber with amazing penetrative action” and although Quentin wasn’t 8 inches, it didn't seem like the time or place to correct a facebook tag.

Too bad he’d been dressed as Bilbo Baggins at the time.

Anyway, maybe it had been his fault that Alice dumped him, but maybe it was _fate_ since Eliot was probably his soulmate.

“Do you believe in soulmates?” Quentin asked.

Julia stared at him for a moment. “When was the last time you thought about something with this head” - she tapped him hard in the middle of his forehead - “and not that head?” she said gesturing to his crotch.

“So that's a 'no' on soulmates then?”

 

***

 

The second key was in New Jersey, fucking New Jersey. Quentin kicked a chair when they figured it out. Their button could only get them back and forth to Fillory, so they borrowed a car from Julia’s ex-boyfriend and Quentin's first crush, James. Alice packed the trunk with books, Julia packed all of her witch stuff, and Quentin ran to the bodega for Cheetos. Which Alice took five minutes into the trip and refused to pass back to Quentin, squished into the backseat.

They left in the middle of the night to avoid traffic and pulled up to a dilapidated mansion at sunrise, three hours and one gross gas station bathroom later.

“This is Jersey Devil territory,” Quentin said enthusiastically as they stepped out of the car, forgetting he’d spent the past twelve hours complaining about going to New Jersey.

Alice and Julia were already casting Mann Reveal and looking through their fingers.

“Top floor, all the way to the right?” Julia asked.

Quentin joined in and saw all kinds of protective and warding magic coming from that room.

The front door was unlocked, so it wasn’t too surprising that Eliot, Margo, and Kady were already there. There was a safe with a keyboard, which seemed like the likely spot for the key to be. Eliot was lounging on a couch, ankles crossed neatly on the armrest. He was wearing a blue suit this time and looked really good. Kady and Margo were sitting at a table strewn with papers and books.

“I bet you don’t even know how to solve for Schwarzschild’s radius,” Kady hissed, slamming a page full of equations and a pencil in front of Julia.

“I could solve that in my sleep!" Julia said. 

"If you were in my bed we wouldn't be sleeping," Kady said. 

“It’s a trick,” Quentin sighed, nudging Eliot's legs. Eliot moved his legs so Quentin could sit and then put his feet in Quentin's lap.

Alice had been looking over Julia's shoulder as Julia and Kady argued about theorems and who had the better bed for sex.

"Like what you see?" purred Margo into Alice's ear.

Alice turned to Margo. “It’s a good thing you can get by in life being so gorgeous because obviously you should be solving with the Arrhenius equation,” she said almost manically.

“Arrhenius equation?” Margo yelled back. “Ha! That ... could totally work,” and she and Alice started scribbling on the same sheet of paper.

“So I hear you’re a Fillory nerd,” Eliot said, completely ignoring the four women yelling at each other as they did complicated experimental math.

“My PhD is going to be about contextualizing Fillory and Further in a post 9/11 world,” Quentin said, “so that’s Fillory _expert_ to you.”

“He’s written nearly a hundred words,” Julia the betrayer said not looking up from where she was solving a long equation.

“We should get a drink sometime and talk about Fillory,” Eliot said. A look passed over his face. “And we should also get together and talk about Fillory in a non-euphemistic sort of way because now that we’re on this quest it would actually be really helpful.”

“I HAVE IT! I HAVE IT!” Alice yelled, clutching the paper to her chest.

Just then there was a shimmer and Penny walked through again. “Just here to collect the key,” he said. He looked around. “I thought you had the key already! You just have the equation for the key. I can’t believe how excited you all got about an equation.” He looked mildly horrified, like he’d just stepped his bare foot into a pile of cat puke.

“Fucking Penny,” Quentin muttered.

“It’s not your fucking key,” Kady said, sending out yellow waves of … some sort of magic. Which Penny neatly sidestepped.

“Psychic, remember?” Penny said, blatantly staring at Julia's chest.

“My eyes are up here, Mister,” Julia said.

“Sorry,” Penny said, actually looking sorry. “Kady has been thinking about your chest all day and it has rubbed off on me.”

“That’s not true!” Kady said angrily. “I’ve been thinking about her ass just as much.”

"People, think about the wrong answer!" Margo called out. "This asshole is not taking our key again." 

Penny shrugged. "Good try," and he bent over and typed something on the keyboard. The safe clicked open. 

"Shit," Alice said. "Sorry, I am pathologically incapable of thinking wrong answers." 

"Thanks for the key, losers," Penny said waving the key around and disappeared. 

"Hey, are you free tomorrow night?" Eliot asked Quentin. 

  

***

 

Quentin was so excited for his date with Eliot.

“Where are you going on your date?” Julia asked, leaning against the bathroom door frame as Quentin tried parting his hair on the other side.

“It’s not a date,” Quentin said.

Julia laughed.

“It’s a recon mission!”

Julia laughed harder. Ugh, best friends were the worst.

“You look less frumpy than usual,” she said, plucking his sleeve. “Is that your _I want to get laid_ black t-shirt?”

“He wore it on our first date,” Alice said, pushing her way into their tiny bathroom to brush her teeth.

He was going to murder both of them or do something really drastic, like move to New Jersey.

He slunk out of the house wearing his lucky black t-shirt and grabbed a taxi to the bar where he was meeting Eliot. He walked in and as his eyes adjusted to the dim he saw Eliot, leaning casually against the bar, wearing a very sexy shirt that was unbuttoned at the top.

“Hi, Quentin,” Eliot said as Quentin approached. “I’ve ordered us martinis if that’s ok.” 

“Perfect,” Quentin said. He knew what a martini was, from James Bond, right? Shaken, not stirred.

The bartender set two martinis on the bar and added a toothpick with a few olives into each drink. Eliot handed one glass to Quentin and held up the other.

“To our ongoing battle of brains and brawns,” Eliot said with a smirk. “May the best man win.”

“To the hottest man,” Quentin said, completely distracted by Eliot’s smile. He took a generous sip and managed not to splutter. Why had no one warned him that martinis were kinda gross? They both set their drinks on the bar and Quentin pretended to fuss with Eliot’s collar as he put the truth serum into Eliot’s drink, classic sleight of hand.

They chatted about the best pizza spots and how they'd learned about the whole magician thing. Quentin kept an eye on the level of Eliot’s drink, growing more and more giddy with each sip.

The finished their drinks at the same time, setting their glasses down in unison. “What do you think about Cold-Waugh-ter for combining our names?” Quentin asked. “Like Cold-w-a-u-g-h-t-e-r?”

Eliot tilted his head. “Well, Waugh-Coldwater or Coldwater-Waugh  _are_ hard to say -”

“That’s what I said to Julia!” Quentin interrupted.

“But Cold-waugh-ter feels like I’m losing all of my identity to you.”

“I hadn’t thought of that, I just like puns,” Quentin said.

They stared at each other.

“I truthied you,” Quentin admitted.

Eliot looked surprised. “I truthied you.”

It was Quentin’s turn to be surprised. “Shit,” he said. “I wanted to ask you about the keys.”

“Same,” Eliot said. “I also promised Kady to find out if Julia was seeing anyone.”

“She’s single and been stalking Kady’s credit card purchases for days,” Quentin said.

“What an absolute  _flirt_ ,” Eliot said. He took a step closer to Quentin. “So I’d like to ride your dick until I’m so sore I can’t walk tomorrow.”

“You’re so hot I’ve been listing minor greek deities in my head to keep from getting a semi,” Quentin said as Eliot shrugged his coat back on.

“I can work with that,” Eliot said, holding his hand out to Quentin.

 

***

 

Quentin woke feeling a bit worse for the wear; truth serum hangovers were a bitch.

“I gotta go,” he said pressing a kiss to Eliot’s shoulder.

“Kill ya later,” Eliot said with a flick of his wrist as he burrowed his head into the pillow.

Quentin tried for fifteen minutes to hail a cab in the pouring rain, and no one even bothered to slow down for him. He ended up walking the ten minutes home and came in soaking wet.

Alice and Julia were eating Count Chocula in front of the tv.

“What did you find out?” Alice asked.

“How’s Eliot?” Julia was smirking.

“Eliot is fine,” Quentin said. “His father wasn’t accepting of his sexuality, but now that he’s been able to forge an identity separate from both his family and the small town he was raised in, he’s finding it easier to love and be loved in return.”

“Wow,” Julia said.

“Anything to help us track down the rest of the keys?” Alice asked.

“There was a double truthie situation going on,” Quentin said. “It didn’t seem like the right time to ask.”

Alice sighed loudly.

“The good news is that Eliot was a total gentleman I didn’t tell him any of our secrets,” Quentin said. Wait a minute. His heart fell to his stomach as a memory suddenly flooded his brain. “Wait. I might have told him about the mosaic.”

Alice screeched at him. Julia started eating her cereal doubletime.

Quentin felt his phone vibrate and pulled it out. “Every time I sit I think about your dick,” the text read.

His heart fluttered. Best date ever.

 

***

 

Margo and Kady were sitting on the ground staring into a box. Quentin leaned over and saw five keys suspended on strings.

“Choose the wrong one and die?” Alice asked.

“Working assumption,” Margo said.

“Very Indiana Jones,” Quentin said excitely. He looked closer at the keys. Four of them were ornate and then there was a plain one. If he wanted to beat Penny this time he just had to go for it. He stuck his hand in, grabbed the plain one and nothing exploded.

"Holy shit," he said. "It worked." Alice, Margo, Julia and Kady were staring at him dumbfounded. 

"You could have killed us all!" Margo yelled.

"Run!" Julia said, grabbing Alice's hand. 

"Call me," Eliot mouthed with his hand up to his ear. Quentin smiled at him until Julia pushed him into the hallway. 

 

 ***

 

Quentin was never going to get the smell of raw sewage out of his hair. He miserably clomped up the steps to their apartment. Hopefully Alice and Julia had better luck with their section of sewer. It had been a miserable 24 hours. 

He opened the door and Julia and Alice were sitting at the table eating Franken Berry cereal. They looked clean and well rested. His spidey senses were tingling.

"There you are, Quentin," Julia said barely looking up from her bowl. 

"Aren't you going to ask about the key?" Quentin asked.

"There was no key," Alice said, starting to laugh. "We sent you to the sewer to keep Penny out of our way." She laughed even harder, and pulled out a key from around her neck. "This was in a safety deposit box in Queens." She was laughing so hard she was gasping. 

"You did _what_?" Quentin asked incredulously. He looked to Julia. 

Julia shrugged. "It worked. Go take a shower, you smell awful." 

 

***

 

They arrived at the cave. "Penny wuz here" was spray-painted across the boards that blocked the entrance to the cave.

"I am going to kick that guy's _ass_ ," Quentin said. 

Julia shrugged. "He's not so bad."

Alice looked at her. "He stole our key!"

"Maybe we just don't have a full, big-picture view of the quest," she said. 

"I am going to kick that guy's ass _twice_ ," Quentin said.

 

 *** 

 

Quentin, Julia, and Alice arrived at the coordinates and ran smack dab into a slight electric current.

“Ow,” Quentin said, dusting himself off from where he had landed on the ground.

“I take it Team Attractive beat us here,” Julia said.

“Team Attractive?” Alice said incredulously. “How about Team Enemy? Team Baddies?”

Julia shrugged. “They’re more attractive than evil.”

Alice looked to Quentin for help, but Quentin had to agree with Julia. “They’re all really hot, like 10s across the board, so, like, they could still be a 9 on the evil side.” Alice threw her hands up in exasperation.

Julia and Alice easily downed the wards.

“Hello? Eliot?” Quentin called out. Julia and Alice glared at him. “What?” he asked. “You took down their wards, so they know we’re here.”

“Team Hotstuff is here,” Quentin heard Eliot call out.

“Someone get Julia.” That was Kady.

Quentin, Julia, and Alice walked towards the voices coming from an old and gorgeous piece of tile-work that was laid out in front of an small house. It looked like it must have been cozy at one time, but now it looked like a good place to come to avoid responsibilities, which, honestly, was kind of Quentin’s specialty. He could come here and not write a word for his dissertation for weeks on end.

“We need to do a summoning spell,” Kady said. “We could use an extra set of hands.”

Eliot had been drawing sigils on the ground and as Quentin walked up, he switched to suggestively pretending to lick the chalk.

“Two pairs of hands,” Margo said, glaring at Eliot.

The four women arranged themselves around the sigils and Margo started talking about … something and Eliot was dragging Quentin towards the house.

“I used two ancient Norse runes in there, so that probably bought us another five minutes,” Eliot said, already loosening his tie.

“Should we help?” Quentin asked sneaking a glance over.

“Staying out of their way is its own form of helping,” Eliot said wisely.

“That sounds right to me." Quentin jumped up and wrapped his legs around Eliot’s waist and they started kissing. Eliot somehow got the door open and carried him across the threshold and they fell onto the bed together.

They emerged later and Quentin could feel where Eliot’s stubble had left his neck and ass raw.

"So did we get the key?" Quentin asked Julia, smoothing his shirt down and checking that he had buttoned his pants.

"We're sharing," Julia said. "We get it two nights a week and every other weekend, splitting holidays, starting with Yom Kippur."

Eliot was trying to arrange a scarf over the hickeys Quentin had left on his neck.

“Did you have fun?” Margo asked him, hand on hip. 

"Are we going to tell them that we used their fucking for the sex magic portion of the spell?" Julia asked. 

"Never," Kady said.

“What if it was sex pollen?” Quentin asked. Like the need to have sex with Eliot had been so strong, he wouldn't be surprised if there was some reason for it besides his incessant horniness that happened whenever he was around Eliot.

“It wasn’t sex pollen,” Alice said. "This is standard Quentin can’t keep his dick to himself behavior.”

“There's a _chance_ it could have been sex pollen,” Quentin said.

 

***

 

This time it was definitely sex pollen. They were on the final key, so _of course_ this had to happen. They’d used the button to jump to the forest and the pollen started to fall on them immediately. It left a yellow, sticky layer over everything. 

“We need to get the key and get out of here,” Alice groaned. Julia was working a hand down her pants. Quentin wondered how much it would hurt if he rubbed himself on the tree. Sure, the bark would chafe, but anything would feel better than this.

He heard the telltale signs of a portal.

“What is this stuff?” Kady asked.

“Are you guys feeling the most horny you’ve ever felt in your life?” Margo asked. "Like just discovered your clit horny?"

“Sex pollen,” Eliot said happily. “Quentin Coldwater, I need your dick.”

“Over here, Margo,” Alice called out. “Help!”

Eliot was there quickly and he fell on top of Quentin and they started kissing and that felt good and Eliot got their clothes off in record time and that felt good and then Eliot slid down on Quentin’s dick - “This is why you should always carry backup lube in your boots, Quentin” - and that felt so so good.

“No one can concentrate long enough to do a portal, so we’ll just use the button,” Julia said, looking either very pleased at coming up with a foolproof plan or whatever it was that Kady was doing between her legs. Probably the plan because Julia was always a professional. “Oh god, Kady, right there, don’t stop,” she moaned. Hmmm, so … maybe not the plan?

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Penny appear out of thin air. Penny was wearing a mask over his mouth and started walking to the stump in the center of the clearing, straight to the key. Dammit. Penny made it five steps before doubling over. He ripped his mask off. “None of you thought to think at me the sex pollen works on skin contact and not inhalation? You _fuckers_.” He bit his lip.

“I’ll fuck Penny,” Kady called out.

“Literally no one is asking you to fuck Penny,” Margo said.

“I’ll help,” Julia said.

Penny shrugged and took his shirt off in one fluid motion. Well if they weren’t leaving for a while, Quentin and Eliot had time for another round.

 

***

 

All seven of the magicians were gathered in the spacious loft that Margo and Eliot lived in. There had been seven showers and everyone was wearing towels or clothing from Eliot’s closet while their clothes went through the wash, twice. 

Eliot and Margo had made cocktails and nachos.

“I think it’s time to lay it all out on the table,” Julia said.

Quentin thought about fucking Eliot on the table.

“I _heard_ that, Coldwater,” Penny said.

Julia glared at both Penny and Quentin, which wasn’t fair because all Quentin had done was think a tiny thought about Eliot and how good Eliot would look being naked on this table.

“Coldwater, NO!” Penny turned and yelled in his face.

Quentin thought as loud as he could the song that was stuck in his head.  _Hey, now, you're an all star, get your game on, go play._

"You're going to pay for that," Penny said, his eyes narrowing as he glared at Quentin. 

“So a few months ago, I was visited by Our Lady Underground,” Julia started.

“Whooooo?” Margo shrilled.

"She's a goddess and she told me to take the ill-suited lovers and find a book. We found the book, which lead us to the keys.”

Margo stood. “Eliot was visited by a Questing Beast who told us about the mission. Then it was the same, the book and the keys.”

Eliot shoved a nacho in his mouth. “He told me to take two women who could kick my ass.” Kady nodded once and Margo looked smug.

“Which one?” Quentin asked. “Which Questing Beast?”

“The Great Cock,” Eliot said crisply.

“I haven’t heard of the Great Cock,” Quentin said.

“Did you hear of the sex pollen disaster zone?” Penny asked. “Maybe you don’t know everything there is to know about Fillory.”

“It was a children’s book!” Quentin said. "They had to leave out some of the more nefarious themes." Oh, that could be a good dissertation topic.

"Penny, how did you learn about the quest?" Kady asked.

"Oh, I was just minding my business, when all of these loud people started thinking about quests and keys and it sounded like easy money and here I am." 

"Someone please punch him in the face," Quentin said. 

“Anyway,” Julia said over Quentin, “we have all of these keys, but why?”

“We haven’t checked the book,” Alice and Margo said at the same time. They both grabbed their copies and there was a new chapter, an epilogue about defeating something called the Beast.

Eliot read the epilogue out loud and honestly Quentin wasn’t paying that close of attention because Eliot’s voice was really sexy, sexy in a distracting way. Eliot stopped talking at a certain point so maybe that was the whole chapter.

“Yes, he was done,” Penny said sounding annoyed.

“Shut up,” Quentin said.

“So we need to destroy the Beast, which is going to destroy magic, but we can use the keys to restart magic?” Julia said.

Quentin nodded enthusiastically because Julia was always right and he had no idea what Eliot had just read.

“What if drinking the seed of Ember isn’t a metaphor?” Alice asked.

"Ew," Margo offered. 

“So like a simile?” Quentin asked. Everyone politely ignored him. 

“Since there’s a chance we could all die, I say we get in at least one good fuck before we leave,” Eliot said standing, and then pulled Quentin to his feet. “If you need me, I’ll be the one choking on Quentin’s dick.”

“I like this plan,” Quentin said.

“I hope you catch neurosyphilis, your dick falls off, you get psychosis, and die,” Alice said.

“That was _very_ specific,” Eliot said.

“I cheated on her with a guy wearing Luke Skywalker costume,” Quentin said.

"I hope someone has a Plan B on how to save magic," Penny said, helping himself to some of the nachos on Julia's plate. "Because none of us is remotely qualified." 

"First Eliot's going to give me a blow job," Quentin said.

"A _spectacular_ blow job," Eliot said.

Quentin pointed at Penny. "And then I'm going to save magic to spite you."

"As long as you have your priorities," Julia said. 

And he did. Eliot was dragging him to his bedroom hopefully. He was going to have a quickie with Eliot, let the rest of them come up with a plan, and save magic. What could possibly go wrong? 

"Everything," Penny called out.

Well, that was life. At least now he was going to get a spectacular blow job before everything went to shit. All things considered, things were looking up. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for coming along on this ride with me. 
> 
> "Hey, now, you're an all star, get your game on, go play" is from Smash Mouth's "All Star" and was chosen as it was the song that was stuck in my head. For like a week, god, I hate that song.
> 
> I am on [tumblr](https://numinousnumbat.tumblr.com/).


End file.
